Kathleen Hale wrote and illustrated 19 Orlando (The Marmalade Cat) books that were published between 1938-72. She claimed in a interview toward the end of her life that her husband Douglas, a medical researcher, had been the model for Orlando. She had a colorful life that included a spell working for Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, and she spent 16 months as Augustus John’s secretary. She admitted to letting John seduce her ‘out of curiosity’. After her marriage she also had an affair with Arthur Lett-Haines, the long-time lover of the painter Cedric Morris. So popular were the books that in 1951 a ballet, Orlando’s Silver Wedding, for which Hale designed the sets and costumes, was commissioned to celebrate The Festival of Britain. While Hale undoubtedly enjoyed the celebrity the marmalade cat brought to her (she was awarded an OBE in 1976) she felt that Orlando had rather hijacked her career as a painter. The self-deprecating title of her autobiography A Slender Reputation, came from a remark by Cedric Morris that Hale had slung her “slender reputation on the broad shoulders of a eunuch cat.” But though Hale may have made light of her life’s work, even claiming, perhaps to shock, that she had grown to ‘hate’ Orlando, the books are written with affection and wit, and the illustrations, beautifully reproduced from drawings made on lithographic plates, are works of the greatest artistry. Hale had a genius for capturing the heft and stretch of her feline cast. Just look at the cover illustration for Orlando’s Evening Out. Did ever an artist better capture the grace and character of a cat in a drawing? I think not. Hale was the real thing. Seek out her books and treasure them. After Hale’s death, Margaret Drabble wrote of her: ‘Kathleen Hale, in her life, played the brave and dangerous game of trying to balance Reason and Moderation with Magic and Excess. She succeeded triumphantly, and... (https://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/kathleen-and-orlando/) undefined

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